displaying their arms
and legs, seemed to mock, in dumb show.
Nothing was changed, to Eph's eyes, as he looked about. Even the
handbill of familiar pattern:
"STANDING WOOD FOR SALE.
APPLY TO J. CARTER, ADMIN'R,"
seemed to have always been there.
The village parliament remained spellbound. Mr. Adams tied up the
purchases and mildly inquired:
"Shall I charge this?"
Not that he was anxious to open an account, but that he would probably
have gone to the length of selling Eph a barrel of molasses "on tick"
rather than run any risk of offending so formidable a character.
"No," said Eph; "I will pay for the things."
And having put the packages into a canvas bag, and selected some
fish-hooks and lines from the show-case, where they lay environed by
jackknives, jewsharps, and gum-drops--dear to the eyes of his
childhood--he paid what was due, said "Good-night, William," to the
storekeeper, and walked steadily out into the night.
"Wall," said the skipper, "I am surprised! I strove to think o' suthin'
to say, all the time he was here, but I swow I couldn't think o'
nothin'. I couldn't ask him if it seemed good to git home, nor how the
thermometer had varied in different parts o' the town where he'd been.
Everything seemed to fetch right up standin' to the State's-prison."
"I was just goin' to say, 'How'd ye leave everybody?'" said Doane; "but
that kind o' seemed to bring up them he'd left. I felt real bad, though,
to hev the feller go off 'thout none on us speakin' to him. He's got a
hard furrer to plough; and yet I don't s'pose there's much harm in him,
'f Eliphalet only keeps quiet."
"Eliphalet!" said a young sailor, contemptuously. "No fear o' him! They
say he's so sca't of Eph he hain't hardly swallowed nothin' for a week."
"But where will he live?" asked a short, curly-haired young man, whom
Eph had seemed not to recognize. It was the new doctor, who, after
having made his way through college and "the great medical school in
Boston," had, two years before
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